


A Spell Of Utter Severing

by misreall



Series: Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it. [2]
Category: Loki: Agent of Asgard, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: AU Loki - Freeform, Anal Play, Bath Sex, Bathing/Washing, Dating, Dom/sub Undertones, Drinking, Dubious Ethics, Dubious Morality, F/M, Horn Stimulation, Horn kink, Karaoke, Light Dom/sub, Loki is still sort of a sex demon, Magic, Mildly Dubious Consent, Oral Sex, Pretty much just as dubious as the first story, Rough Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Sex, Sex Toys, Vaginal Sex, Witchcraft, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-08-19 21:50:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16542929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misreall/pseuds/misreall
Summary: Nora thought her incubus problems were over, but they are just getting started.





	1. I Don’t Go Looking for Trouble, Unless He’s Late With His Share of the Rent

Nora was running late for an appointment downtown with someone that was actually interested in paying her to do a little witching for them.  Which was marvelous since her never very full bank account had developed a hollow echo of late. She ran down the stairs, her shoes in her hand, buttoning her black cardigan.  

The look she gave herself in the long mirror on the living room closet door made her dig through her bag for a hairbrush, otherwise it wasn’t too bad.  Black skirt, black shirt, black sweater, black stockings, black shoes, all reasonably matching. People expected that sort of thing. She reached under her collar and pulled out the silver, horned moon medallion that she had found digging around in Claire’s junk drawer.  

It had nothing to do with their tradition, but it helped sell the idea. 

The smell of coffee lured her into the kitchen, despite knowing it was a bad idea.  Just one cup and then she could be off and still a reasonable amount of late. If  _ he _ happened to not be in there…

Like a thief in her own house, Nora slowly pushed open the kitchen door to peer in.  

Damn.

Loki was there, standing looking out of her back door at the dark, cold day.  The rain overnight had flooded her yard with fallen leaves - mostly bright yellow from the elm that shaded the house and was the only one on the block that had been spared the last go round with dutch elm disease in neighborhood.  That had cost Claire a lot of effort, but it was worth it to save something so tall and beautiful and imposing.

Loki was tall and beautiful and imposing, too.  And he’d certainly cost Nora a lot of effort lately, but the tree had certainly shown more gratitude to her aunt than he had to her.  

He leaned in the door, and she could see his head resting against the frame, his horns gleaming in the dull light.  He was wearing a white dress shirt that Thomas had left behind along with a few other items of clothing that he had magic’d to fit around the wings that were currently hanging rather low from his slumped shoulders.  There was something so dejected in the pose, and the bleak day he was observing, that Nora almost felt sorry for him.

Quietly, not wanting to disturb him, she crept toward the coffee maker and the almost full pot.

Quicker than any viper, Loki turned on his heel, grabbed the metal carafe, and poured it slowly and from a great height into the sink, his green eyes boring coldly into hers, his mouth a thin line of spite.  When it was empty he opened his hand and let it fall with a mighty  _ p’tang _ and a few bounces, possibly denting it in the process and certainly doing her sink no good.

“Hey…” she said weakly.  It was better than the last time he got up before her and made the coffee.  Then he’d just thrown the pot out of the fortunately open window.

Afterwards, he swept gracefully past her and out of the door to the living room without a word.  

Well, almost.

One of his ravens’ wings caught on one of the chairs around her little formica table, causing it to spin, while the dishcloth that had been hanging over the back of it snagged in the feathers so it waved behind him like a little flag dotted with pink pigs.  The other one knocked over a soda glass filled with straws, swizzle sticks, disposable chopstick sets still in their paper wrapper, sending them everywhere, as well as a box of teabags on the counter, and Claire’s commemorative salt and pepper set from their driving trip to Salem in 2010.

Then, he had to turn sideways and shuffle awkwardly through the rather narrow door between the rooms.  Even if it had been a normal sized door his wings would have meant he would have turn as he did with every other door in the house, but this one had been altered when Claire had added a hidden pantry to the house in the 80’s, so this one he could only get in and out of with a little shimmy that was nice to watch but clearly humiliated him.

Having Loki live with her had been frustrating before he’d transformed.  Now it was downright annoying. Like having a gigantic, pissed off swan for a roommate - majestical, irritated, forever knocking things over with his wings, and hissing at her constantly for no reason.  

Except swans could fly and Loki couldn’t.  

So it was more like having an exceptionally petulant emu living in her house.

Granted, part of the reason he was such a pain in her ass and dangerous to glassware was the couldn’t fly thing.  It was also why he was furious with her. The wings were useless and couldn’t be hidden unless suddenly cloaks came back into fashion, so he was also stuck in her house.  

The dishcloth came loose and fluttered to the ground behind him.  With a sigh, Nora scooped it up. She almost felt bad for Loki, but his grudge had been going on for nearly three weeks with no signs of abating.  Nothing that had happened to him had been her intent, which seemed to mean nothing to him. Nor did the fact that she’d had a very good opportunity to bind him all of the way into the statue that had been his tether for so long.  Not only did she not bind him, but in a way, she freed him.

And gave him the first orgasm of his ridiculously long existence.

Not even a thank you for that, by the way.

Not that Nora wasn’t willing to pat herself on the back for it and maybe that was all she would get.  It had been terrifying and splendid and everything else it could be. The way he had clutched her to him, shaking as he rode out the pleasure left her wondering if maybe he hadn’t liked it.  

Another reason to be unhappy with her.

He wasn’t much happier with her cousin Maura and Thomas, either.  They had gone back to England to do some further research to see if they could figure out what had happened.  They were coming back next week and hopefully would have something helpful to report.

Either way, it was going to make for a very awkward Thanksgiving, she thought, pulling on her coat, hoping there was a Starbucks in the lobby of the building her meeting was in.

 

_ In England, somewhere between six and seven hours away _ ….

Maura paced as she read from the journal left by Dorcas Millard in 1687.  A public Reform Church member and a private witch, there was a legend about her that she had once defeated a demon in mystical combat that did not end with it either bound or destroyed, but somehow transfigured.  But no one seemed to know how she did it or what form the transformation took.

She would take seven perfect steps, then turn on the toes of her red stilettos, and go back, another perfect seven steps, each stride exactly twelve inches since that was how long the chain between her leg shackles was.  

It made a surprisingly pleasant jingle as she went.

At the turn she snuck a look at Thomas where he was on the phone, furiously making notes, his glasses pushed up on his head.  They only had a few days before they were due back in Chicago to have Thanksgiving with Nora and her incubus and he was pushing himself hard, wanting to make a better impression than the one he had on All Saints Day when they had come in too late to help.  

He hated to have failed, to have been sloppy.  

That Nora didn’t hold it against either of them made it worse for him.

Anyway, Nora liked him already.  She had said she liked how happy and relaxed Maura seemed.  That morning, after Loki had shown back up at the house he had gone upstairs and refused to answer any questions.  

Thomas had been shouting through the closed door at him while the cousins had caught up a bit.  After a while he stormed into the kitchen to work on the biggest table she had.

“So what’s this hot for teacher situation with you and Christopher Chant, hmmm?  Whatever it is, it seems to have escalated pretty quickly. Especially for you. Normally anything under a month with a boy is you still trying to decide if it’s ok to let him buy you a mocha.”  Nora asked, her eyebrows waggling not very subtly.

“Thomas isn’t a boy.”

Nora looked appraisingly at the wizard where he was bent over her kitchen table, writing something in Sumerian, “No, no he isn’t.”

“Nora!”

“Hey, I just partially de-frocked the King of the Erotic Demons and possibly messed up the sexual equilibrium of the spheres.  The universe may never allow me to fuck again, so at least let me ogle your boyfriend’s behind.”

“I don’t think he considers himself my boyfriend...” Maura muttered, blushing.

“He’s your something.  He’s your something with a fine ass and I am going to enjoy it.  Politely, from a distance.”

Maura sighed, she still wasn’t sure what Thomas considered their relationship to be.  

She looked down at the elaborately made chains and the leather padded cuffs.  But he did give  _ lovely _ gifts.  

 

_ Back in Chicago, sometime later… _

Nora, clearly feeling triumphant and wanting to make a peace offering, had a carrier full of venti-sized Starbucks cups.  Her normal scent of cardamom and brown sugar mixed with the salty caramel and the bitterness of the coffee. 

It was what fucking should smell like, Loki thought, but didn’t.  Then again, he loved that so human perfume of sweat on hot, clean skin, the wet from between pretty legs, and-

Damn. 

He was horny again.

Since he’d been… he’d been…  _ transmogrified _ by his unwitting hostess everything that was normal to him had gone haywire.  One moment his pheromones were so powerful that Nora had to call the police to get the aroused and stunned humans who were blocking the sidewalk out of the way, and then realized the mistake when they joined the crowd, he found himself wanting to crowd surf naked through them.

And the next it was gone and his own interest in anything sexual turned to nausea and gave him a raging headache.

He turned away from her on the barstool Nora had moved to the living room so he would have somewhere to perch whilst he watched movies.  With the wings no chair with a back was comfortable. 

“I got the job!” she said, sitting on the couch and handing him a cup like they were friends or something.  He took it, even though they weren’t. “I might even be able to pay the gas bill this month!”

“How nice…” he said, dripping ice. 

“Jesus…  It’s important.  I have to have some income, you could be happy for me.  And for yourself. If I lose this house you won’t-”

Loki glared at her. What a loss it would be for her to have to leave her hovel.  “Yes, how nice that you get to leave. Whilst I am just as trapped as ever. More so.  At least before I could go onto the porch, into the yard, but now! Like this?”

“I think they’re pretty…” she mumbled.

He preened under the compliment and then rose to loom over her, furious at himself for liking her finding the wings attractive.  Of course she did. 

They were his.  They were his now, even if they were utterly different from those he’d had so long ago.  They were magnificent though they were black. 

“How do you think I feel?  To be a creature of neither earth nor sky?  To be neither fish nor fowl? To have no home, no purpose, I who was born to serve and then forced to slay?  To feed?” Loki sagged on to the stool, his wings drooping onto her not very clean floor. 

Nora’s nose twitched and, not able to stop herself, said, “Well, you are kind of fow-”

He raised an elegant long finger, pointing between her eyes, “One more bird joke and I promise you a spanking that would make your cousin’s innamorata feel inadequate.”

Nora snorted and leaned back, crossing her arms, “Promises, promises.”

He lifted a considering eyebrow in her direction.  He knew she actually had no interest in being spanked, but this conversation was at least distracting him from his pouting.  And it was the closest they had come to having sex since he’d broken out in feathers. 

Each time they grew close, physically or otherwise, when he thought it would happen, he found himself flagging and his blood running as cold as the Volga, his lust gone as if it had never been.  But the frustration remained, growing worse each time he found himself hard again, wanting her again.

Wanting, most horribly,  _ only  _ Nora at all.

As if she was right about making those constant bird jokes, as if that shaking, destroying, annihilating orgasm had caused him to impress upon her sexually.  Thankfully he no longer seemed to need to feed as much as he had in the past, not being hungry and needing to suck and lick and fuck life from his partners. A quickie call guiding one of his regular phone partners to a probably very pedestrian peak had been enough to keep him sated for weeks now.  

Which was good, because he kept having to hang up all of the time due to being bored and sickened every time he’d tried it since. 

For now, though, he seemed to be staying the course.  

 

Loki stood back up, stepping to loom over her, “Stand up, Nora,” he said, his voice deeper and rougher than its normal baritone purr.  

“Why?” she asked.  She did it, but she still asked.  He was so close she skimmed along his body as she stood, her hands wanting to touch his chest, her own breasts were suddenly very achy and the only thing that would fix it would be to rub them on him.  Or to have him rub them for her. That would work too.

The long bulge of his cock was impossible to avoid touching.  The back of one of her hands barely brushed it and his breath hissed in, making his mouth snarl at her.  

He grasped the fingers of that hand and lifted them towards his mouth as if he were going to kiss them.  Instead he pulled her hand up higher and wrapped it around one of his horns, his neck stretching and moving like snake as she touched him there.

With his free hand he stroked the place where her skirt ended and her heavy black tights covered her thighs.  One finger gently moved over to stroke instead up and down so terribly slowly where her legs were pressed together.  

Then up more, pushing her skirt up as it went, slower and slower as it worked towards her apex, as if determined to feel each piece of wool that went into her stockings as he went.  

It took pure will to keep from spreading her legs and humping that beautiful hand.  

She caught up some of his hair, her hand gliding up and down the ridges as she gave him a horn job that seemed to be driving him as crazy as she was.  

The veriest tip of his finger brushed the veriest tip of her swollen, pulsing clit, and Nora used that sensitive horn to pull his mouth down on to the moan she couldn’t stop.

He needs this as much as I do, she thought, as he groaned in tune with her, free hand grabbing her hair to hold her close as he leisurely loved her mouth, while his shoulders were tense as marble.  Her eyes fluttered open to see his, glowing red, closing as if he were about to fall asleep and start to dream.  Then, only for a second, she could have sworn she saw his wings start to rise and fully unfurl.

“Gelu-” she started to say, to tell him, the angelic name coming to her lips without having thought of it for days.

His eyes opened and the hellfire in them retreated as if it had never been, and then so did the rich, deep green, leaving them pale as celadon, his expression impassive, even full of dislike. 

All of the anger he’d shown her before was better than the abstract distaste he showed now as he moved his hand away, looking disgusted at the wet on his fingers.  Stepped out of her touch and picked up a napkin from the Starbucks carrier to fastidiously wipe them clean.

“No,” he said to the look on her face.  And then, for the first time since he'd returned the morning after Halloween, left her house.

Nora sat down and pulled one of Claire’s crocheted throws over her shoulder.  

The house was freezing.

 

The next morning, Nora got up early, needing to head to Lincoln Park for her job.  The door to Loki’s room was partly open and she saw him lying across it diagonally, as if he had fallen there from exhaustion.  

Of course he was on his stomach, the wings blanketing all of him but the lower part of his legs, his long, graceful feet, and one bare arm that was wrapped around his pillow.  She could tell he was naked under them and a sigh that she hated almost woke him.

He stirred at bit, and his fingers tensed and then released but whatever he'd done when he was out had left him too exhausted to wake.

She had to get him out of her house.

She wanted to know where he had gone all night.

On the kitchen table was an envelope with “For the morgage” scrawled on it in an almost calligraphic hand.  

It was filled with hundred dollar bills.


	2. Trouble is Not a Friend of Mine, We Just Fuck Sometimes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nora goes to work, so does Loki.

_In one of the author’s favorite bars_ …

Nora’s new boss was flirting with her.  

She was pretty sure.

It was subtle and not disrespectful, and he had waited until the end of the day when a bunch of people from the building site had decided to go for a beer.  It was worth celebrating the first day of construction without one of the workers being possessed.

She and Freddie were sitting next to each other at one of the old wooden tables at The Red Lion - the only bar in Lincoln Park Nora could tolerate - and he had once or twice slid his arm just a bit against her’s when he was reaching for his share of the cheese plate.

Later, when she was telling a story about the time in college when she’d been asked to perform a blessing on the new Women's Studies building by one of her professors and had accidentally cursed every man who entered, he had leaned on the table to face her, his head leaning on his hand.  He had burrowed his fingers deep into his dark blonde waves and laughed for a long time.

Granted it was a funny, if accidental curse.

All of those men having that one place on their backs that was almost impossible to reach to itch.  To itch a whole lot.

“Remind me to stay on your good side if that’s what you can do without meaning to,” he said, lightly touching the rim of his scotch to her sitting beer glass.  “Though it proves you’re the right woman for my job,” he added, sipping a bit and maintaining eye contact.

There had been a time in the not too recent past that Nora would have been certain he was flirting.  She would have responded in kind, with throaty laughs and accidental touches and sexy sipping. Now she felt like she was going to make the wrong move, or that she was misunderstanding and there was no way that this really stupidly handsome man with lovely blue eyes and big hands was thinking about taking her upstairs to bend her over one of the couches.

He was very, very hot.  Especially when he stood up to get another round and leaned very close to ask if she wanted anything else.  She actually gulped, like a kid, and just shook her head quickly saying she had to get going. He looked disappointed.  

Or maybe not.  Maybe he found her no more attractive than Colin behind the bar.  Or probably less. Colin was extremely flirtatious and roguish. For a moment outside, looking back in the window, Nora had a pleasant fantasy of Freddie and Colin kissing each other’s faces off.

Freddie turned and saw her, he gave her a confused look and a little wave.

Blushing for the first time in her adult life, Nora hustled off to the Red Line.  

Fucking Loki, or maybe not fucking Loki, was ruining her life.

 

 _At Nora’s house, about ten days later_ …

Black Wednesday had practically been a high holy day for Loki.  Along with every version of carnival, New Years Eve, and for some unknown and unknowable reason April 27th, it was one of the great, meaningless hookup days of the year.  A time when strangers, friends, and exes alike went out to get drunk before having to deal with their families and did things they would never do otherwise, oftentimes with people they hated or at least did not like very much.  

Walking down the right street full of bars in the past could give him a contact high.

On Black Wednesdays past he’d effortlessly lured tasty, hormonally charged snacks into the most elaborate depravities.

Now, Loki waited until the delivery person left the groceries he had ordered and retreated to his truck before bringing in the bags.  Hiding like a nervous cat because he was deformed.

Granted, his deformity was profoundly beautiful, or would be if he could control them.

Since Nora had… done whatever mad thing she had done to him, Loki had been in control of nothing.  How he hated that!

When his first - and thus far only - orgasm had finally started to wane after wracking his body for what must have been several hours, he had slumped over Nora as she fainted away from exhaustion.  He wondered if she could actually remember much of what had happened during that most endless of orgasms or if her brain was hiding it in a box marked “Memories of bad hairstyles” so she would never be tempted to unpack it and possibly go insane.

Unable to stop himself, several eons of afterglow also caught up with him, and he’d gathered her into his arms, helplessly kissing her sweet, sweet face over and over again, nuzzling her hair, wanting to breathe her breaths, feeling the blood in her veins.  

It was bad enough to suddenly feel sympathy for what exactly it was all of those helpless thralls of his had been trying to achieve by coming, but to _empathise_ like a human over that luminous sense of connection was horrifying.  The next thing he would be buying comfortable, loose fitting pants and stop having sex in public with creatures he could barely tolerate and deeply needed to fuck.

He snorted.  At this rate he would never be having sex again of any kind.  Perhaps it was for the best. It had been a nightmare.

It had been all of the heaven he had been denied for so long.  But unlike when he had actually been in heaven he had not been there alone.

As he’d held Nora for what he was determined would be the last time even if his angelic erectile dysfunction abated, he’d found that he could remember a touch of Enochian.  One phrase he’d never used. He whispered it into her sleeping ear.

That was when the wings erupted from his back in an ecstasy of ripping that was almost as overwhelming as the orgasm.   As he writhed again, biting his fist, tears of agony and joy rolling down his face as ice filled his veins, his heart, his thoughts.  When it was over, disgusted at the smells and sights of himself and the woman, he had climbed out of the window, aimed his arms to the sky, and soared towards the purity of the frozen, highest skies.

Sort of.

Rather, he had caught his toes on the wooden sill.  

His wings had refused to so much as twitch.

And with a decidedly undignified and much worse, ungraceful wheeling of his arms and a garbled noise that sounded like someone was getting punched in the face with a goose, he fell the two stories into a very unfriendly, no longer fruiting bramble that snarled like a wolf-pack along the north side of Nora’s terrible little house.  

The plant must have originally been cultivated by Aunt Claire of Nora’s sacred memory for some deeply magical blackberries because the small prickles dug into his normally unassailable flesh, including in a few areas that gave him some ideas for a particularly pain addicted former thrall.  

Also, ow!

Stunned, Loki had wandered naked and bleeding the honey-scented ichor that angels had for blood from both the half-healed wing gashes on his back and the scratches everywhere else, out of the yard.  Thankfully it was Halloween and he was de-tumesced for the first time in recorded history so the few people still wandering the streets at that hour thought he was drunk and had stumbled out of a costume party.  Not having his normal, massive erection in front and heavy useless wings in the back had done something to his balance, so he really couldn’t blame them for thinking he was intoxicated, but the stupid comments!

“Excellent costume, dude!” and “I think you lost your loincloth!” had been bro’d at him by more than one reveller.  

The one who asked if it had hurt when he had fallen out of heaven he had punched in the face.

Of course it hurt.  Who asked something like that?

Since that night nothing had been right with him.  His powers as a demon were unreliable at best, his angelic ones were nonexistent, other than he was periodically a frigid bitch and he’d found himself treating Nora appallingly, teasing her one moment and then rejecting her the next.  Mostly because she scared him.

Despite all of that she’d not only let him stay here, though with the tether of his statue gone she could easily banish him from not only her home but probably the whole city, but she seemed to feel guilty about what happened to him.  The guilt of all of it had sent him out into the night to find a Pai Gow game. After appropriating forty bucks from her wallet for seed money.

Pai Gow players would gamble with anyone.  In fact, one player had offered him $1000 to rub his horns on his tiles.  Loki’d taken it. He knew how broke Nora was. But since the morning he had left the money for her she’d avoided him as much as she could, from someone living in such a small house with her.  She stayed out as much as she could, working, she claimed, but probably also doing research on his condition.

Loki knew she was just trying to keep from having him humiliate her again, like he had the night before that.  

The least he could do, he thought as he unpacked the ingredients, was prepare a proper Thanksgiving dinner for Nora and her guests, as she was not an especially gifted cook.  He would be civil and kind, even if it hurt.

Then, perhaps, she would be willing to watch movie with him again.  His version of A Christmas Carol was a delight.

That plan, unlike him, flew straight out of the window when Nora came home tipsy and reeking of another male. Then he remembered it wasn’t in him to be civil or kind.  He was a damned (Iiterally) angel and an actual fucking demon.

Time they _both_ remembered that.

 

 _At O’Hare airport, along with more people than you could possibly imagine_ …

Maura hated crowds.  She claimed it was not phobic, just a normal, rational dislike of too many people that she did not know touching or bumping into her.  But every jump and flinch rather worried Thomas.

Not that he didn’t hate crowds as well.  

He needed to take the edge off and distract Maura who was in danger of imploding.

Using a sigil that he had learned from a German vampire while vacationing in Italy that would be very dangerous in the wrong hands, they were able to slip into a secured area and then onto a crowded conveyor belt where they appeared to be a pile of luggage.  

They were able to ride around committing a secret act of public indecency for about forty-five minutes before Maura became loud, her moans and cries of “Thank you, sir” could be heard over the milling crowd of holiday travelers.

 

 _At Nora’s around the same time_ …

Nora turned and gave Freddie a lazy wave and a big smile from under her porchlight, her whole body relaxed for the first time in weeks.  He had wanted to walk her up the door, but she’d managed to put him off.

He threw her a kiss, in a big, sloppy gesture before hopping back into car.  

She had to stifle a giggle at the memory of the two of them and how loud and wild they’d been, as she rooted through her bag for her keys, already wondering when they could do it again.  

Walking in, her already good mood was improved by the smell of baking.  Pumpkin pie for sure, and maybe apple as well. Who didn’t want to come home to a big, gorgeous male making dessert, even if he was a cranky bastard most of the time?  

Dropping her coat and purse, and kicking off her heels, she padded into the kitchen with a smile for the baker.  Loki was at the sink, drying his hands. Not only were there pies going, she could see the turkey brining in a bucket of ice on the back landing, and he’d cleaned up as he’d gone along.  Or just magicked the mess away, she didn’t care which.

“That smells am-”

Not looking at her, Loki’s head cocked to the side, and his shoulders tensed.  

Then, amazingly, so did his wings.  They rose up and up, till their perfect arch was higher than his head, though they remained folded.  “Oh, your wings!” The day had actually gotten better. Maybe he could finally remember how to fly, she thought, internally jumping up and down.

He turned slowly, his eyes burning in the deep shadow they formed, his horns glinting dangerously in the light from her ceiling fan, that really needed to be dusted.  “You smell nauseating,” he sneered at her.

Just like that, her mood dropped into the basement with the old Christmas decorations, “Thanks…”  She turned, suddenly wanting a shower.

“Is that it?  No retort?” He had moved closer to her.

“To that?  No. I’m kind of done with retorting and bantering and your being a dick to me.”  Nora sniffed the sleeve of her grey blouse. It was her favorite. She smelled a little bit of pizza and beer, of some sweat, and the bare remains of the _June 23, 1868_ from Black Phoenix that she had dabbed on that morning, wanting to smell pretty even if she didn’t feel that way.

He reached over her to grab her arm, running his nose along it as well, “Who is he?”

“Who is who?” she tried to pull her arm free but he held it, using it to turn her about so they were very close.  Again. She wondered what he would say was distasteful about her now.

“The man.  Who. Is. He?”

Huh?  “Freddie?  You mean my boss?  Is that what you smell?  I don’t think he smells bad…”

“He’s all over you, like a dog in heat.”  Still holding her arm, he put his free hand to her throat, his eyes crimson slits, “And you smell…” he leaned in, nuzzling her hair, her neck, her shoulders, his great wings making a canopy over them, “...happy.  He made you happy… How?” He murmured, his voice husky, “Did he use his tongue? His fingers? His cock? Did you ride his thigh like a little girl on her daddy’s lap or did you ride his phallus like a equestrian spurring her steed with heel and crop?”

It pissed her off enough that she was perpetually turned on by him, but when he started talking it went from damply uncomfortable to downright misery, knowing nothing would come of it.  

She wondered if he was jealous because he thought she’d gotten laid when he couldn’t, or because he thought she’d gotten laid at all, and did he know himself?

Reaching up, she took a big hank of his silky hair and stood on her toes to whisper back, as seductively as she could, “He used his mouth.  He used it for a long long time... And so did I. Until I couldn’t take anymore. He took me to sing karaoke, you gigantic ostrich’s anus!”

Pushing away from his startled grasp, she made it to the living room before he got in front of her to stand on the bottom of the staircase, his wings now wide enough to block her.  “You sing?” Loki asked, sounding uncertain.

“Yes,” she crossed her arms and tried to do that thing he did where he glared and sulked at the same time.  

Nope, it was physically impossible for a mere mortal.

He blinked at her, and then smiled a bit, just a bit, “You probably have a beautiful voice.”

“I do, actually.  Well, I mean, I can sing.  It was a good date.”

“Date?”  He sounded as confused as she felt at his sudden change of mood.

“With Freddie.  I finished the job today, so he felt free to ask me on a date.  We had pizza and sang karaoke. It was nice.”

He rolled his eyes, shaking his head, his voice getting louder as he spoke, “It was nice.  It was nice! How cute. Maybe next time you can share a milkshake. He should have taken a room at the Peninsula, hand fed you sushi from Momotaro, and bathed you in champagne, the idiot!”

Nora sighed, “Yeah, I’m a cheap date, actually.”

“Not for me, you cost me very dearly.”

“Fuck you,” she said, done with his whiplash changes of mood.  

She just wanted to go to bed.  

“Promises, promises,” he said, stepping down to her, into a kiss that she found herself accepting without a thought, her arms slipping around his neck, his around her waist, their mouths opening together, their tongues playing coyly with each other.  For a few moments she forgot everything but the feel of him pressed to her and how every bit of him felt good.

Then, she could feel the cold creeping over him, his arms growing both tense and loose, his mouth moving into a sneer.  The heat of his gaze turned to frost.

She held on tighter, but pulled out of that hypnotic kiss to see a too familiar, pale, and disliking look.  “Hey, but this is what I sang first, before I sang with him. When I was thinking about you, not Freddie, when I saw it on the list I thought of you,” she said, hoping she hadn’t overdone it screaming out that last duet, really needing her voice to hold out.  

Singing that close to someone should have felt awkward and wrong, but almost as soon as she hit the chorus the fire in him flared, almost burning her skin where they still touched.  Nora leaned closer, her mouth a scant inch from his ear, his sharp cheek, his elegant jaw, his long neck. Taking in as much of his beauty from as close as she could, while she could.  Noting little details she’d never seen before, like the small, scar-like mark at the left corner of his mouth, the way his soot black lashes had golden tips so they were even longer than they appeared, what looked like a nick near the top of his right horn.

That his wings smelled of burning incense and woodsmoke when they were cloaked about him like they were, as opposed to the odor of a cold, empty church that they had when they hung limply from his back.

The way his skin shivered under the warmth of her mouth being so close to it, turning a rock standard into a torch song by sheer force of will.

Angelic disdain was no match for Chrissy Amphlett and the greatest anthem of self-pleasure ever written. Barely had the last, breathy verse left her lips when Loki had picked her up, putting her on the little table that sat next to the door, and knelt.  

Nora was swollen and wet to the point of discomfort.  Even the moment of her panties over her felt rough. Rather than making them disappear as he normally had, Loki kissed her through them, his tongue licking the silk along her slit, then gently tickling her clit.  She squirmed and grabbed at his horns, trying to pull him closer, to get more friction, more anything. It would take next to nothing to make her come like her life depended on it.

So he gave her less than that.  His preternatural muscles held easily against her pulling, the need making her arms weak at any rate, and she fell back, lax and slightly moaning as he continued to toy with her though what had been her favorite pair of underpants that she now absolutely hated. Her fingers held onto his horns, but the rest of her was his to do with as he pleased.

Long fingered hands wrapped around her hips to keep her perfectly still as he tortured her by being so close and yet so far.  The wood from the old table creaked alarmingly and swayed a bit as he acted as if she had the same endless millenia before her that he did.  

When her cunt started to pulse softly, desperate to find something to pull in, his hands closed around sides of her panties, destroying them with a soft cry of silk.  His tongue thrust into her, sure and curved, so it lapped impossibly against her g-spot, while he reached under her so he could bury his face further. The moans he let out were nearly as loud as her own.  

“Come for me, ma délicieuse sorcière.  Soak me with your perfect, aching, little treasure box…” his deep voice rumbled and coiled through her, trembling against every spot and nub and nerve ending, as with no warning he thrust two suddenly unnaturally long fingers deep into her, finding a place that she’d only heard rumors of and then laying his head back and basking in the wet that flooded out of her as she squeezed his head between her thighs and screamed her voice raw, pushing harder and jerking up and down as she came again and again, her hands working feverishly on his glorious horns.  

When she let go just enough, he bent his head forward and rubbed them along her opening, and she fucked herself against them, unable to think enough to be afraid of the sharp tips.  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Red Lion is real. So is Colin. He'd probably find this funny...but if you ever go there, don't tell him.  
> http://redlionchicago.com/
> 
> Also, for my non-US readers, Black Wednesday is a very real thing.


	3. Holidays Are Always a Lot of Trouble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The title says it all

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Un-beta'd, so don't blame Caffiend for my mistakes.

_ The Morning of Thanksgiving…. _

Before she opened her eyes Nora woke to the memory of what had she had let Loki do to her with his horns, what he had _ loved  _ doing with them, what she had loved having done to her, and found herself really embarrassed for the first since college.  Then she remembered how she sang ‘I Touch Myself’ directly into his face before he had tongue fucked her into submission, making her roll over and hide her face with a shaky moan of horror.

_ Then _ she remembered what had happened after all of that. 

Her legs had been too weak to carry her properly.  Loki had half lifted her so she was resting against his body, his arm tight around her waist.  His other hand kept stroking her hair and he was whispering steadily into her ear in an ornate and sibilant language that she didn’t recognise as he walked them towards the staircase.

“This is wrong,” she moan, feebility clutching at his shoulder, his hair, his arm, anywhere that her hands and arms might fall as she tried to raise them and then failed over and over.  “I shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Which is what makes you so  delicious,” he answered, his voice rich and poisonous as it slid into her blood.  

“You’ve been a total shit to me since  _ you know what _ , on Halloween,” she said, gesturing to his wings, which were still primarily decorative but were now at least sitting high enough to not be giving her floor the first good sweeping it had had in months.  “It’s not my fault that-, I didn’t know. How could I know what was going to happen? I didn’t know. I didn’t even know that was your name. That it was a name.”

The memory of the whining tone of her voice as she tried to passively aggress him into admitting he was being unfairly mean to her just burned.  She’d never whined at a man - male in this case, she guessed - in her life. Ok, maybe her dad when she wanted to go to the movies and he refused to drive her, and possibly her high school Latin teacher, but that was it. 

He just smirked down at her, clearly enjoying her making an idiot of herself over him.  Now she was just like everyone else, he had to be thinking.

And then they had gotten to the bedroom…. 

With a groan of regret, she sat up on the edge of the bed, wanting to get away. To flee from her own bed, get in the shower and get Loki’s smoky scent off of her skin.  To brush her teeth, gargle, and drink several pots of coffee in the hope it would get the lingering taste of him out of her mouth. 

Damn Loki and his stupid demon-angel cock that produced what she was now convinced had to to be a mildly addictive, euphoria inducing, kind of sperm!  There was no way she would have acted so ridiculously otherwise, like some girl swooning after her first good fuck. 

Her bed was now canted towards the foot, one of the legs having snapped off with a sound like a gunshot coming through her window last night.  

_ Oh, Claire _ , she thought,  _ what have I gotten myself into?  I really need you now. _

 

_ The Night Before Thanksgiving, or What Nora Wishes had Actually Been Black-Out Wednesday, at Least for Her _ …. 

She’d been on her knees, her ass high in the air, her head on the mattress, while Loki so slowly fucked her that there were times she wasn’t sure if he was even moving.  

She hated him.  

If he’d tried to stop she would’ve killed him.

He had crouched over her, his hair hanging over her shoulders, one long arm under he so he could lazily massage her clit.  The whole time he talked. 

He talked and talked and talked.  

In the most nonchalant way, in a slightly amused way.  Although punctuated by an occasional dirty murmur or the sinking his sharp canines into her shoulder when she tried to make him move faster.  

He talked about how she should really paint the whole house but her bedroom especially, “This, um, shall we call it a peculiar shade of blue, is rather depressing, don’t you find?  Oh, yes, pet, I know I’m terrible, I can feel your poor legs trembling. It makes you tremble inside too… Exquisite….”

He talked about how cheap and rough her bed linens were.  “Have you never heard of silk? Ah, so naughty, but I love to feel you squeeze me like that, like you’re hugging my phallus for dear life.  Like your lovely cunt just wants to never let me go, just wants me to fuck it so slowly like this forever and ever,” he seemed to briefly forget himself, nuzzling her ear.  Then, in a more thoughtful tone, “But perhaps bamboo sheets, with a cashmere blanket or two? Oh, well, it  _ is _ the South Side, isn’t it?”

He talked about the dry brine he had prepared for the turkey they would be having the next day. “The secret is just a little curry powder.  You’re welcome. For dinner _ and _ my penis.”

Then he talked about sex.  Because it was his subject.

Thinking of Thanksgiving took him back to the time he’d seduced an entire English settlement in the 1660s, somewhere north of Boston.  One day they had all been farming millet and praying for the Lord to save them from the bloodthirsty savages whose land they were stealing and who they were also trying to infect with either smallpox or Christianity, then a few nights later they were all dancing naked around a  raging bonfire made up of most of their clothing and the wood that was supposed to be used to build a chapel, deep in the darkest part of the woods. Loki took each one of them in turn. By morning they were all out cold, he was only mildly hungry, and when he left them to head south to snack on some Spaniards he passed a group of Abenaki hunters who he flirted with for a few moments.

“I’m sure they didn’t kill  _ all  _ of the colonists… And they probably adopted some of the children that had been left behind snug in their beds,”  he mused. “Oh well, either way.”

“I know what you’re doing,” Nora said into her not at all elegant, but still soft sheets, the ones with the green stripes that she was very, very fond of.  Her voice was muffled by the cotten and the way that her face was pressed to the mattress. 

“What?  Or, sorry,” he wrapped his free arm around her shoulders and pulled her up so her back was pressed against the burning hot wall of his chest, still impaling her from behind, still idly rubbing her clit with two fingers.  “Now, ‘what?’”

Before she could answer, he started rocking them both back and forth in opposite time to his slightly harder, slightly faster thrusts.  

(Thinking about it in the morning, Nora wondered how the physics of that even worked, and chalked it up to his being the King of the Sex Demons, to whom even the laws of physical nature must bow.  Or she was remembering it wrong. She’d had a lot on her mind and in her vagina at that point, so some of the details were foggy.)

“I know what you’re doing.  All men do it. Well, most men, I think,” she said, panting slightly, letting her head fall back against him.  “Distracting yourself. Trying to keep from coming. It’s ok. I get it. But most human men have an internal monologue.  I’m guessing demons, or angels, not so much.”

Now his voice wasn’t matter of fact.  Loki growled, a deep sound that made her skin prickle with fear even as she clenched impossibly hard around him, her wet from inside and from the heat of his body leaving her sodden and soft rolled down both of their legs.  He wrapped his hand around her throat, stopping his fondling of her clit. Instead he began to lightly slap his fingertips against it, bending her further back so she was completely off balance.

“Do you really think I need such puerile aids to keep me from spending in you, little witch?  Do you really think that you are so irresistible? That without aid of magic and trickery and the power of All Hallows,  _ and  _ my own state of half-starvation at the time that you would again be able to drive me, ME, to my completion again, should it be against my will?”

Laughing, pushing against the grip of his hand on her neck, Nora half-shouted, “Yes!  Yes I do. Yes I can.” 

Nora reached up and behind to take two handfuls of his glorious, sweat-soaked hair, which then slowly wound itself around her fists so he was as bound to her as she was to him.  Twisting, she started to press her lips up against his, when his grip on her throat tightened alarmingly for a moment, her breath growing reedy, the edge of her vision starting to darken and waver, her hips jerking wildly as her body fought for life and pleasure at the same time. 

Then, his fingers loosened and slid up her slick skin to take her jaw, “Yes, you can…” he whispered against her, his lips opening over hers, pulling her tongue in, letting her fuck his mouth with the same languorous but pace that he was setting below.  A pace that grew urgent and rough.

Now, as they were locked together, his hips began to piston against her, forcing small sounds from her, whimpers, catches of air, cries that started to sound like they might be his name, one of his names.  He blocked her words over and over with his tongue and teeth, with his own grunts and what was a chant of that same language Nora didn’t know. All matching the slapping of the skin of their thighs, his pelvis against her ass, of his hand on her clit, hard and loud and faster and wilder.

Nora gave first.  It was inevitable.  She could feel herself reaching the point of no return and tried to fight it, to make him give first.  But no. No matter what she could do to him, eons of practice would trounce the most willing heart. Not that her heart was involved, she told herself.  This was strictly between their genitals. 

Which was why what happened next was so horrible.   

When she came, her body shaking, and opening and closing around him wildly, and she would have flailed and fallen had they not been so tightly wrapped together, when the pleasure of it overtook her sense and she felt herself start to disappear into nothing but neediness and the blooming, wildness of it, she arched away from him, crying out that she loved him.

Startling him into a thrust so deep and fierce -  and wonderfully painful - that it broke one of the legs on her poor, dear, old bed.

His hair unwrapped itself from around her hands like a pair of startled snakes that suddenly remembered they had to be somewhere else.  The arm that held her up jerked away from her, and the hand that cradled her jaw pulled away, up in the air, like an angry toddler’s when presented with cooked vegetables.  

Leaving her to fall onto her hands and off of his still hard dick, wearily glad that at least she hadn’t face bounced.

By the time she rolled over he was gone in a gust of wings, her door slamming behind him.

One black and iridescent feather lightly floated in his wake, landing with the faintest brush across the back of her fingers where they dug furiously into her mattress.  The only one she had ever seen dislodged no matter how badly and ungainly Loki had been with dragging them around and banging them into things all over the house.

Too tired and miserable to move, Nora fell asleep.

She was holding it when she woke up.  

 

Loki couldn’t remember the moments between Nora’s hateful lie and his finding himself in her backyard, on his hands and knees in the muck of dirt and rotting plants.  He had fled from her bed as if pursued by dogs - not that he would have been afraid of actual dogs - and sought the cold, pure air of the night. He needed the heights that would take him from all of these filthy, human needs and smells and textures and tastes!

He’d sought the air, and found himself again in the mud.  

The wet soil, already cold this late in the year, froze where he touched it and when he stood the ice broke off of his body, leaving him with the illusion of being as inviolate as he had once been.  Forever, perfectly untouched.

But he could smell her still.  He was certain that when he was finally able again to obtain the highest of heavens, from which he could even look down upon even the other angels, her scent would still bedeck his skin.   

He dreaded the thought.

He wanted it to be so.  Damned as he was, he wanted to smell her and never forget.

Pulling himself up and wringing out the ends of his wings, he sagged into one of the rusty white metal chairs around the old patio table that should have been dragged into Nora’s garage a least a month ago.  It dug unpleasantly into his ass and back, but Loki endured the pain, trying to mortify his flesh as much as he was mortified in general.

He hated her for doing this to him.  For leaving him in a place where he was neither unmitigatedly pure or entirely degraded.  Nora made him vulnerable, the one thing that even Lucifer had failed at. When he had been cast from heaven and cursed by _ that _ failure he had at least still been perfect. The consummate, most corrupt, demon of them all.  

When, after a few hundred years of mindless orgies and devouring, he re-christened himself as Loki, he had been determined to be pure in his purpose, as infernal as he had been divine.   It was a name that over the eons came to be a byword for every form of decadence, deception, and appetite. 

Now what was he?  A heartsick nonentity with either a feather problem or a prong dilemma, depending on which side of his personality was currently asserting itself.  

And the only thing that might help him was the one thing that both parts of him dreaded.  Letting Nora drag him back to that place of bliss and affinity. Maybe if she remembered what passed between them when he’d had his first, devastating orgasm it would be different.  He would feel differently at least. Yet it was clear that she recalled nothing after she’d spoken his allegedly destroyed name. 

Above him the sky was growing pale, the pinkness of an early winter clouding out the stars.  It would be dawn soon.

He really needed to start on his stock for the gravy.

 

_ Thanksgiving Day _ ….

Maura had never celebrated Thanksgiving before, even though she had a few expat friends in Dublin who had a bit of a party for it every year that she was invited along to.  Thomas had attended a few in London over the years, so he was able to pick a proper Zinfandel and she settled for bringing an awkward looking but magically potent bouquet of daisies and heather for protection, and lilies for entity cleansing.  And protection.

She felt that her cousin needed a lot of protection these days, as well as entities cleansed from her little house.

When they had called that morning to check what time they should arrive, not only had she been shocked that the incubus answered the old landline with a cool, proprietary tone as if Maura had been calling his home, but she’d been worried at the rather depressed tone of Nora’s voice after he had been convinced to hand over the phone. 

Nora didn’t get depressed.  In a family of moody, black Irish witches and bastards, she and Aunt Claire had been the practical ones, looking for solutions where they could be found, offering good advice, a willing ear, or a kind place to have a cry, depending on which was needed.  

Even when Claire had died, Nora had seemed to easily shoulder her grief, taking over their aunt’s place in the Chicago magical community and moving on with a few tears and just as many laughs and stories.  

As they drove, Thomas easily handling the strange streets and the rented Jag, he reached over to take Maura’s hand.  “I can see you fretting over your cousin, darling. Not to worry. I think your new spell, once we gather the last components, is quite the thing and should take care of her little demon problem once and for all.”

His large hand covering hers completely let Maura’s shoulders relax for the first time that day.  In such a short time they had become … whatever they were. She was afraid to put a name to it, that Thomas might disagree, laughing at the idea that they were anything more than temporary comrades who shared certain affinities that she’d never been aware of in herself before.

That when this current, tricky situation had been resolved they would go their own ways with no regrets and a few fond memories.

“Brilliant,” she thought to herself, “now I’m fretting for myself as well.  Just worry about Nora for now, girl. Your problems can wait.”

 

Nora pulled herself together enough to make a pitcher of Old Fashioneds (which would scandalize Claire, since the sacred cocktail of Wisconsin supper clubs should be made to order) and get into clothes for company.  

“Do you own nothing but black?”  Loki said, assessing her with cold, celadon pale eyes.  

He, of course, was dressed in an impeccable suit of grey worsted wool and a perfectly windsor’d tie of deep blue silk.  The jacket was draped over the back of one of the kitchen chairs and she could see the only concession to flamboyance in his clothing was the pink satin back panel of his gorgeously fitted vest.  Otherwise, he was calm as a winter lake and just as warm.

So the angel was dominant today.  Good to know. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about him trying to touch her.  If he did she would either burst into flames or tears, neither of which seemed like a good idea when they had company coming.  Plus, he wouldn’t tease or humiliate her by mentioning anything she’d said or done the night before. 

Sex mortified him, especially sex his body was involved in.

_ They _ had company coming.  Like  _ they _ were a couple or something, she snorted to herself.  He was a supernatural interloper and the quicker Maura and her naughty new friend helped her get rid of him the sooner she could get back to struggling financially and eating inferior food like she should be.  

The doorbell rang exactly at two p.m.  That had to be Thomas’s influence. Maura was never on time, her genius mind getting easily distracted by new computer tricks and old grimoires.

“Ok, so you need to be nice to my cousin, or I’m going to cut your wings off, deep fry them, and serve them with buffalo sauce as pre-dinner snack.”

“I thought I was perfectly civil to her when last we met,” he said, easing into his jacket that somehow slid in place around those very wings. “Also, that would be a waste of effort.  You know you can’t cook.”

“No, you were snippy with her.  I won’t even say how you were to Thomas.”

He shrugged, an elegant motion accompanied by a little bob of those wings.  They were much more mobile than they had been before, “He’s awful.”

“I liked him ok,” she said, heading to the door.

“Yes, but we know you lack all discernment.  Look at what you choose to share your home with,” he said, his cool tone deepening slightly.

Nora stopped and turned to look at him.  There was a rueful look on Loki’s face. Or Geluseal’s.  She wasn’t sure who he was any longer. Neither was he. 

“Um, yeah.  Dinner smells wonderful.  Thank you for that. But, also, you know, about last night, never again, right?  We agree it's a bad idea.” He said nothing, but cocked his head slightly to the side, as if wondering why she was bothering to state the obvious.  “We do agree, don’t we?”

He gave her what could almost be a bow.  The door rang again. They went to answer it in silence.

 

_ Thanksgiving Night, after too much food _ ….

Thomas needed to work off that meal.  Who would conceive of that much food in one sitting outside of Christmas?

Americans, of course.

He also needed to move enough to work the ice crystals out of his muscles.  The incubus, or whatever it was now, had given off an actual and metaphysical chill that meant Nora had to periodically use a bit of practical witchcraft to keep the mash and gravy from icing over, as well as working hard to keep the conversation going.  Admittedly neither he nor the creature had helped very much with that. They had stared across the table with mutual antipathy if nothing else, whilst the poor cousins desperately lunged for any bit of chat to keep the nasty silence that wanted to fall over the table at bay.

Whatever the being was that was currently infesting Maura’s cousin’s home, it was far more dangerous than the mere incubus it had originally been.  Cold, fuming power radiated off of it in waves visible only to him. Beneath that aura of cold was still more power, this white hot and pulsing with anger and discomfort.  

And from both, fine, wispy tendrils reached out, coiling like woodsmoke and rising mist through the air towards Nora, not quite reaching her but ever straining towards that goal.  

It was an admittedly delectable meal.  The turkey was moist and rich, with a delicately spiced, salty skin.  The potatoes were whipped, velvety, and had a pornographic amount of butter.  The bizarre dish of green beans with mushrooms topped with crispy onions that seemed to be an especial favorite of Nora’s was perfumed with sherry and had a savoriness that seemed impossible in a casserole.  Even the rolls were homemade, tender, and brushed with just a bit of honey, and laced through with an alert, tart touch of lemon to keep all of the heavy food from being too much.

Of the selection of pies for dessert that he found himself unable to even consider eating nothing could be said.  Fortunately the ladies were happily able to acquit themselves better in that area, whilst Thomas sipped a glass of cognac and watched Loki watching Nora, as if that were his meal.

They had feasted on the demon’s sublimation, and it was delicious.

Nora had insisted that Thomas and Maura retire to the living room whilst she and Loki clean up.  The creature had looked affronted, as if she had told him he was going to be cleaning an outhouse with his bare hands, yet started stacking plates right away, if with ill grace.  “Yes, please go rest after all of that work Eating,” he muttered. 

Nora’s lips thinned, and she shook her head, “And you can afford to be nice if you want to ever get out of here, since Thomas and Maura didn’t have to come and try to helping with your wing fail issues and my roommate problem.”

Bickering, they went about clearing the table as Maura took his hand and drew him out of the room, “We’ll be going up to your workroom, instead, if we can.  I have to do some work or I’ll be out like a light after that meal.”

Nora waved them on, still trading jibes with Loki as she finished her glass of wine and gathered dropped napkins.

They had to pass Nora’s little bedroom to get to her workroom.  The whole house was really quite small and rather tired looking, though delightfully comfortable, very different from where Thomas had always lived, and from Maura’s small, utilitarian apartment.  

“Uhhhhh…..” Maura said, looking at Nora’s neatly made bed that listed badly to one corner, the leg having not just broken.  It had snapped off under some great pressure and flown across the room where it protruded obscenely from the ugly blue paint, a spider-web crack working outwards around it through the plaster.  

“Indeed,” he added.

He could see Maura feverishly licking her lips, her pupils wide and hungry as she looked to him.

Thomas took her by the hips, pulling her with him into the workroom.  The combined pheromones of demon, angel, and witch, the not exactly buried sensuality of the meal, the fact that everything Loki turned his hand to probably had some inherent aphrodisiacal qualities, and his own insistent, constant, and borderline embarrassing desire for his beautiful witch-goddess were all too much for his usual his iron control.  

When she opened her mouth to protest as he unzipped her dress, pulling it from her shoulders to have his dessert starting with her peaked and pretty breasts, he laid a finger to her lips, “Shhhh, pet, Your Sir knows what we both need.”

 

_ Downstairs a while later _ …..

The hot water ran out, so Loki turned off the taps just in time to hear Nora’s toothsome cousin and her tiresomely handsome lover moan and cry out their joint completion with a resounding thud of some largish piece of furniture.

He turned to look at Nora who was frozen in the act of putting away a large platter adorned with a winsome picture of a turkey flock.  

Their eyes met, and he could actually feel the hellfire rise in him, turning his eyes to deep, burning red.

A flush rose up her long neck, showing off the tiniest bit of bruising from the night before.

“I’m afraid I rather hate your cousin and her special friend,” he said through gritted teeth.

Nora nodded, “Yeah, me too.”

They both stiffly turned back to their tasks, trying not to get within arms reach of each other in that small kitchen.

  
  
  



	4. You Can Never Go Wrong Expecting Trouble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone is confused. Including the author.

_ Black Friday before dawn _ ….  

Loki woke up with his chest pounding and heaving, every muscle tense, the hellfire of his eyes hot enough to burn through his lids.

The waves of lust coming from every direction were overwhelming.  Agonizing. Although not  _ quite _ as painful as the feeling of his wing being bent the wrong direction when rolled over, having forgotten they were there in that moment of demonic near delirium.

Thankfully, it turned out a wrenched wing was a useful pain - though not the good kind of pain - that brought him around and cleared his head long enough to realize it wasn’t exactly sexual lust he was being bombarded with.  There was a sexual component to it, of course, of a Bacchanalian level of frenzied need that overtook common sense and decency, leaving those humans who were lured to engage in this particular orgy exhausted, spent, and yet somehow still unsatisfied.  And did nothing for him, either.

Damn’d Black Friday sales, he thought to himself.  Every cursed year all of these keyed up people walking around and I can’t even get a snack out of them.

Recognising that he would not be able to return to sleep, and that his demonic nature had reasserted itself in the most superbly, priapically, agonizing way.  

In other words, he was fucking starving.  Starving and burning. Like he had been in those first, monstrous days after he climbed through the earth away from Luci’s curse.

Without a thought, he threw the blankets away from himself and stalked down the hall, his wings high enough that he needed to duck to enter Nora’s room, the door of which he could have sworn opened itself for him.  He wasn’t sure, didn’t care, he just needed to strip and fuck her and feed her on his until the hunger receded and the burning eased.

Just inside the door he stopped.  

The old, decrepit bed’s broken leg was propped up with a stack of books - Harvest Home, The Importance of Living, The Graveyard Book, and a few others that were faced away from him.  The terrible, stripy sheets of the day before had been traded for even older looking ones covered in faded pink cabbage roses. They must have belonged to her aunt because Loki could not picture his Nora buying such insipid linens.  

She herself was curled on her side, her hair still in the braid she had worn it in the night before rather than the long, tangled mess it usually was at night.  One of her hands was tucked under her pillow, the other was laying palm up with the fingers slightly bent. Rather than sleeping naked, as he knew she preferred, she was covered in a long gown of pale lemon, as old as the sheets, with a bit of tatted lace at the neck and cuffs.  It fit her badly, and was much too short.

Something else of Claire’s, he was convinced.  

Even when Nora was still an innocent, he was certain she had never looked it so much as she did at that moment.  Nor had he seen her so tired, with dark circles beneath her eyes and a tight look to her mouth even in sleep.

A feeling, which one he could not say, clogged his throat as he turned to leave her, his penis throbbing in anger.

“Hey, is something wrong?”  Her voice was soft with sleep and she leaned up on her arm, her eyes mostly closed.

“Nothing.  I thought to, rather, I thought to see if you were up and might want breakfast, but you should sleep.”

“I couldn’t eat anyway, but I need coffee.  We have a lot to do today,” she said, getting up like a somnambulist.  “I have the instructions Thomas left after he and Maura fucked off out of here after, um, fucking off  _ in _ here.  Thankfully not actually here, though,” she motioned to her bed, “I don’t think it could have taken anymore.”

Thomas was certain he had figured out a way to unfuck the current cluster Loki and Nora were in.  

Using some kind of non-Euclidean geometry, sacred astronomy, and a divination method that he refused to share, he thought that if they reenacted the events that had caused Loki’s recent angelic debilitation, with a few key changes that Maura and Nora had put their heads together over it should reverse what happened.  However they were on the clock. Because of the alignment of the stars and some other rubbish that Loki had zoned out on - Thomas’s voice had that effect on him - they had to do the ritual on that Saturday night to be sure it would work. 

If they missed their window it would be at least ninety days until they could do it again.

Loki knew he should be rubbing his hands together with glee at the prospect.  No more angelic anti-viagra causing him to come over all limp and judgy about sex.  He’d be free to feed and feed and with his tether having been destroyed on Halloween the world would be his oyster again.  But… but… there was that messy business of his needing to do _ that  _ again. To feel _ that  _ again.

That thing.  That thing that devastated.  That thing that made him vulnerable.  That thing that frightened him more than anything in hell.

He could not think about it.  Not if he wanted to go through with it.

“You should really…  What is that?” he asked, pointing to where her pillow had moved.  Peeping from beneath it was something black and glossy. 

One of his feathers.  

She snatched it up as if he could unsee it if she moved fast enough.  Then, she rolled her eyes, shaking her head at herself. “Um… yeah… about that,” Nora looked at him, very awake and clearly hoping for some inspiration to strike her.  

Loki stepped to her, looking at her mortified, lovely face, took it in his hands, and kissed her as little as he could stand to, his lips barely a rumor on hers, his breath tracing over them and not much more.

 

“What was that for?”  

“Why do you have that?”

They spoke over each other, and Nora wasn’t sure if he’d decided to lay her down on the bed, or if she had put one hand to his face and the other to his hip and moved him with her, but she was on her back, crosswise on her poor, lamed bed, with him above her, braced on his sculpted arms, his expression unknowable, his eyes flickering with fire behind the deep, pine green.

For longer than made sense he neither settled down onto her or stood up.  He just looked at her. Nora snapped her fingers at the door so it slammed closed, partly in case Maura and Thomas returned early, partly hoping to startle Loki into moving in some way.  

Nothing.

She reached up to loop a finger through his nipple ring, but without a change of expression he snatched her hand away, pushing it down so it was pressed to the mattress over her head.  “What?” she snitted at him. “I know that you are… you, but I don’t even think you can stare someone into an orgasm.”

“Yes, I can,” he said, toneless now to go along with expressionless.

“Why am I not surprised...” Nora turned her head to the side, looking at the sky starting to get light, “My GOD!  It’s not dawn yet? Why did you wake me up?”

“I was hungry.”  He still spoke with about as much affect as a model.  

“And you thought I looked like a nice, pre-breakfast snack?  Thanks,” she refused to look at him again. Nora considered herself game.  She liked a little sex for sex’s sake as much as the next person and her feelings were resilient as a rule.  They had to be in a family where on the day before your thirteenth birthday you were sent to find a graveyard somewhere at least a hundred miles from your home, the farther the better, to spend the night alone chanting in medieval French and communing with the dead.

Or no cake and ice cream the next day.

But she was starting to feel a little emotionally thin, as if Loki’s presence in her life was wearing away at it, so now it could be seen through and soon there would be a hole.

“No.  I did not think at all.”

“Because I was convenient and won’t be put off by your wing malfunction?”

He ignored her terrible complement fishing, a habit Nora had always hated in others and felt shitty about at the moment, but she could feel his fingers tightening about her wrist.  Then his weight shifted slightly, so one of his legs was between her’s, and his other knee dug harder into the groaning, nearly dead mattress, his legs taking most of his weight. 

After a few more silent moments she could feel her gown begin to creep upwards, pushed by his hand as it slid slowly over her knee, his thumb lightly circling the tense muscle at the side of the joint, then along the outside of her thigh, until it barely covered her hip.  Long fingers ghosted over the top of her leg, pushing under her ass so he cupped her, lifting so her labia barely brushed on the long muscle of his thigh. For a second she expected him to grind against her there, and she was already wet from that surprisingly gentle caress, but then he simply pushed Claire’s old nightgown higher still, so she was bare to the waist beneath him.

Nora refused to turn her head.

There was a soft push on the bed as he lowered himself enough to brush a kiss against her temple, then just as lightly along the sweep of her cheekbone, trying to get her to turn her head so he could take her mouth.

No, that scarcely existent, too sweet kiss he had given her before they had ended up on her bed again had been quite enough devastation for her before her first cup of coffee, thank you very much.  She liked it better when he was bossy and demanding, when he was all over her, that way was easier. 

“I thought we weren’t going to do this anymore.”

“We are both notorious liars,” he crooned, lowering his mouth towards hers.

When she wouldn’t let him lure her into a kiss, he sighed into her ear, making her body break out in chills and her middle go soft and hot.  Softer and hotter. “My beautiful witch… Kiss me.”

“No,” she closed her eyes.  “If you’re hungry just get on with it.  I don’t mind keeping you fed, but I’m done with anything else.  I can use a good fuck this morning, too. Get the kinks out of my back and...”

Something lightly tickled along her cheek, her neck, down to the hollow of her throat where it circled, something cool.  No, something cold. She opened her eyes to see him leaning over her, holding the beautiful, iridescent feather that had fallen from him between two elegant fingers, and was swirling it down from her clavicle to play along the square neckline of her nightgown.  

He gave her a half smile, his eyes blazing and sleepy looking, and he followed the same path from her cheek to her neck and downwards breath from puckered lips.  

Nora shivered and burned.  Her nipples were to tight they hurt, so he tended to them next, the old flannel giving her no protection.  The very tip of the feather was slightly sharp and wonderfully soft at the same time, and he held it straight above each in turn, toying with her like she was a kitten he dangled string for.  

Unconsciously, she began to move.  He slid his thigh away, so she had nothing for her to rub against, nothing to give her relief.  His cock, however, he let throb against her hip. “Do you need something, Nora?” 

For a moment, Nora stopped, staring at him astonished.  She didn’t think Loki had ever said her name before, but no.  There was one time. She tried to remember and couldn’t. Looking at her face, he frowned and threw his leg over hers so they couldn’t move, muttering, “Stop that.  No thinking now.” 

Then he lowered the feather to trace along her labia and lazily stroke her clit and she couldn’t remember anything.  

The inherent magic in any angelic thing sung through her veins, filling her, stretching her the same as Loki’s cock but with nothing to bear down on, nothing to work against.  Just the feather tormenting her, offering elusive pleasure but no satisfaction. The feather’s owner now getting that kiss she had denied him, now that she was as hungry as he was.  Soon, however, she couldn’t kiss any longer. Nora was limp and panting under what seemed like his taunting her and her own need to come.

“Please…” she said, hating herself for it so she added, “...stop.”

Loki frowned, his head cocked in confusion, but his hand stilled.  “You cannot tell me you do not like what I do to you. Anything I do to you.  You are a lusty thing of this earth, my treasure, a banquet, and I know you, what you want.  Shall I truly stop?”

Oh, damn him all over again, she thought.  “No.”

He laid one of his fingers along the vane of the feather, using the extra stiffness to brush her over-stimulated clit more firmly, the intense heat of his hand against the icy quill made her legs shudder and her cunt seize and pulse against that void of magic that he’d created inside of her.  

“I don’t like how shitty you make me feel about it…” she said, and then came, hard and long, flooding over his hand, making his eyes flare and then die back to a cold, pale green and he hastily left her, his body shuddering with horror.

From the hall she could hear him, “I cannot.  I cannot…” 

Nora stared at her ceiling that really needed to be painted and decided that love really was the worst thing ever.  Next to Loki. She really hated angst.

 

_ At the Langham Hotel many hours later… _

Maura’s phone rang, playing the opening theme to the third season of American Horror Story, meaning it was Nora.  She’d been dreading talking to her after the hurried walk of shame she and Thomas had had last night. 

Nora had been standing with her arms crossed at the bottom of the staircase whilst Loki slow clapped at them.  “As an expert in the field, that was really an above average performance. Bravo.”

Even Thomas had been ashamed.  Not of having sex in her cousin’s house, but of not being able to control himself.  Being out of control was abhorrent to him, but it had been the best part for Maura. To know that just for her, even if it took the power of demonic hormones, he could be that wild, that able to let himself go, if only for the briefest time.

The whole way back to the hotel he’d not spoken to her, and even today he had mostly only answered when she spoke.  And tersely then. Even now, he sat at the desk, writing notes in Sumerian in his journal, the only sounds coming from him the scratch of his fountain pen on the parchment and the occasional rustle of a turning page.  His shoulders were squared, his suited back a wall that she couldn’t get around.

Maura had a feeling he couldn’t wait to get back to England and his life before she had shown up with her problems and all of the trouble that came with them.

Blushing so hard she thought her cousin could hear it, she picked up and answered in an especially chirpy voice, “Hey, coz, I was just going to call you-”

Nora spoke in a fast, waterfall of words.

“What do you mean he’s gone?  Where could he go?”

 

_ That Night and Into the Morning In an Abandoned Mall in the Far South Suburbs of Chicago _ …

The two witches, one of them intimately connected to a thing which was of both hell and heaven, the other an avatar of the rage of the ocean and war, and a wizard, the last and most powerful of his kind, sought Gelusael.  

They used scrying magicks and tracers.  They had objects of power that were linked to his physical self - a black fur coat made from the pelt of the last _ Arctotherium _ , a nipple ring with one perfect ruby shaped like a drop of blood suspended from it, a copy of Ma Gastronomie by Fernand Point bookmarked with leather strap, and a feather that was freezing to the touch and smelled as good as heaven to him even as he was now.

That could not be good, he thought.  

When he had fled Nora’s room he had only thought to hide in her aunt’s rather uncomfortable bedroom for a time until he calmed himself.  Then he would think of something flip yet smutty to say to her and they could go on with their day, preparing to fix him and get him out of her life.  They would never have to see each other again.

But as he sat on the bed, looking at the recipe for winter pate, he felt himself growing colder and colder.  Fire receded in him and ice took its place. The thought of coupling with any creature curdled in his stomach and his phallus went entirely flaccid for the first time since it had first sprouted to life under Lucifer’s vicious curse.  His balls were empty. 

Even his beautiful horns were dull, shrunken even, to the nubs of a yearling or less.

His mind raced.

If he could not do his part of the ritual, Nora’s spell wouldn’t work.  He would be here forever. 

For hours he tried everything he could to excite himself, drawing on demonic powers that he rarely bothered to use since the world always fought to kneel at his feet anyway.  

No porn, however esoteric, no drug, however potent, no group phone sex, however depraved (and his icy disinterest and pointed distaste drove his partners mad with lust so they got pretty nasty even by his exalted standards), no incantation, however ancient, caused his now entirely divine junk to even twitch.  

His wings, however.

His wings had achieved full height, arch, and grandeur.  Yet he still could not achieve as much as a hover over the floorboards beneath his bare feet.

As early dark came over the city, and the air grew thin with chill, Gelusael felt himself hunch.  He was a failure. He had been a terrible angel, selfish and unkind, and a now he wasn’t even much of a demon.  He found himself leaving Nora’s little house, the cosy smell of coffee and herbs suffocating him. An old coat from some dead male relative who must have been a portly giant, covered him enough along with the dark to let him wander.

Miles disappeared under his feet as he tried to reason with himself.  When he found himself standing outside of the old temple of commerce, left behind when most of its worshippers moved out of the economically dying area, or took to worshipping electronically, he thought it an appropriate place to hide his shame.

No one would ever look for him at a mall.

Though abandoned by shoppers and renters, other creatures had found their way here.  Graffiti artists had bedecked the dirty walls and ugly facades with intricate sigils and bright colored cartoons.  Within some of the empty stores the remnants of fires and camps that had give some comfort to those without homes, those seeking a place to do drugs, or those like himself who wanted to hide.  

He could hear a few of them still here.  Most of those who live rough were closer to a certain kind of reality than those who were protected by money and comfort.  They all knew to give him a wide berth, they could feel the cold from him.

At that moment he could feel Nora searching for him.  Maura and her lover were a niggling awareness at the back of his head.  Itching around what would be his occipital lobe if he were human. But Nora was everywhere.  Not just his mind, but his ichor, his spirit, his flesh.

His wings stirred.

His horns coiled upwards, the tips twinking blackly in the low light.

Seating himself on the filthy ground in the very center of the mall beneath what had been a surprisingly attractive sky light, he sat in the bound lotus pose and closed his eyes, trying to put her out of his mind, knowing it would make him harder to find.  

 

_ At Nora’s house _ …

She could feel him now.  Far but not too far away.

Then, in a blip, he was gone.

“Oh, its on, motherfucker,” Nora said, startling Maura and Thomas as she jumped up from the kitchen table they were all working around.

Grabbing a handful of grave dust and three sprigs of rosemary, she hightailed it to her bed.  “You aren’t getting away that easily,” she added, tossing his fur coat over her shoulders, slipping his nipple ring over her pinkie, she sat cross legged with  _ the _ feather in the circle of her legs and intoned the recipe for Gratin Dauphinois in Latin.  

 

_ At the mall _ …. 

There was a faint tickling on his legs that distracted him.

Opening his eyes and looking down he could see a small cat, half-grown, with wild, long grey fur, had availed itself of his lap.  As cold as he was, he was still alive and made a better bed than the ground. It stretched its small paws upwards, yawning, and looked at him rather smugly before falling back asleep.

There was a clear chime of silver in his ear.

She’d found him.

  
  
  
  



	5. You Have Your Problems, Would You Like Mine?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nora and Loki go to the mall, Maura and Thomas don't.

You’ve Got Your Troubles, How Would You Like Mine?

_ Late on the Saturday After Thanksgiving, In an Abandoned Mall in the Far South Suburbs of Chicago _ -

The South Ridge Mall had been one of the biggest shopping centers in the south suburbs.  For close to twenty-five years it had been the site of countless after school hook-ups, acts of petty theft, girl fights, gang fights, girl gang fights, acts of not-too-petty theft, movie dates, hand jobs, blow jobs, scenes of public drunkenness - sometimes enacted by Santa during the Christmas season, scenes of public semi-nudity, family screaming matches, drug deals, and minor accidents.  Nora herself had once taken three buses to get there one winter day when she was thirteen to deliver a threat from her Aunt Claire to one of the women who was reading tarot there during a psychic fair.

“Just tell her,” Claire stopped to blow a long stream of grey-blue smoke from her Kool, “I said to beat it, south of downtown is off limits to her.  Bitch knows what she did.”

The woman had not even bothered packing up her stuff.  She just nodded, grabbed her purse from under her folding table and left.  Nora had thought about it for a minute, took off her parka, and filled in the rest of the day.  She made 357 bucks that she split with Claire and still had the departed witch’s Tarocco Storico della Citta Di Ferrara deck, which was beautiful but had never given her very helpful results.

Sadly for the mall’s businesses and employees, what it had never been was the site of much commerce, other than the movie theatre and the food court, which was why it had closed down ten years before.  

It had been the work of a few minutes to find the open entrance in what had been a loading dock for someplace called CarpetLandia.  Nora had left Maura and Thomas in Claire’s geriatric Honda, telling them to sit tight. The neighborhood was pretty shitty, but there wasn’t anything either of them couldn’t handle.  In Maura’s case, she probably wouldn’t even need her magic, and she might relish a chance to beat on a few thugs. 

Thomas had nodded, not looking up from his tablet where he had been furiously tapping out something the entire drive and Maura was trying to pretend she didn’t care that he was only talking business to her.

The tension between the two of them would have been nerve wracking if she hadn’t had problems of her own.

One problem.

One 6’4, winged, horned, problem that she was ready to leave to his own fucking misery if he didn’t stop acting like an idiot.  

Or if she got tetanus or some other disease from being in this filth pit.  With a small gesture and a handful of geranium seeds mixed with aluminum flakes and a few words of Latin Nora created a faintly flower-scented light that surrounded her and gave off a subtle ‘don’t fuck with me’ vibe that kept the residents of the South Ridge at bay.

When she found Loki, he was sitting in the center of the mall, in a sunken seating area with an old fountain that was filled with garbage.  He was petting a skinny little grey cat, the full moon visible from the massive skylight three stories up. It glinted on the razor tips of his horns and gleamed over the sheen of his glossy black wings.

He was exactly where she had been all of those years before giving tarot readings.

She didn’t know what to say.

“Um, what are you doing here?”

He didn’t speak.

Nora fiddled with the piece of rubble she had been lightly tossing from hand to hand in an unconscious, nervous gesture.  It was a palm-sized piece of heavy, purplish plastic that looked slightly melted. She wondered what it had been. Part of a sign for one of the stores maybe.  

Based on the color it might have been a toy store, or a salon.  Or the Claire’s, where she bought a gross of glittery hairclips for five dollars, and had gotten her ears pierced, after earning that $357.  

“We only have a few more hours to do the thing, unless you want to stay like this.”

There was a slight shrug he gave, or he was adjusting his plumage.  It was hard to say.

_ Fuck it _ , she thought.  One of his wings was higher than the other and he refused to look at her, instead he cuddled the cat in his arms, stroking its head and murmuring gently.  Far more gently than he ever had with her.

She cleared her throat, but there wasn’t so much as a stir of a feather or a flick of a horn from him.

“I  _ am _ in love with you.  I know that for you hearing someone say they love you is probably  _ so  _ tedious for you.  Thousands of year of hearing it said, or panted out, or screamed, or written about in blank verse’ back in the day.  But, well, I’ve never said it to anyone before, so it’s kind of a big deal for me. And even if you can’t feel the same way I at least thought we were friends.” 

Nothing.

“Sorry to bore you,” she said, and then walked away.

For five steps.

Then she turned back and threw the purple, plastic lump straight at his haughty nose.  She’d been a Little League pitcher, and her arm was still first rate.

One of his hands was a blur of motion, catching the missle before it struck him, then his arm turned and it whistled past her head, embedding itself impossibly deeply in one of the brown brick pillars that circled the seating area.  He carefully set the kitten down and stood up. 

With a slow saunter towards her, he shook his head, “I have been told that people adore me, worship me, can’t live without me, can’t bear to do without my cock, my mouth, my ass, my hands, my feet, as you can imagine.”  They both looked down at his elegant, pale bare feet, not only uncut by the rubble and glass that littered the floor of the dead mall, but not even dirty. 

He looked back at her with a rueful half grin, a long lock of hair crossing his face, “That they would do anything for me, to me, that I could do  _ anything _ to them.  I’ve been told by countless people that they are my slaves.  I have had operas written about my prowess and ballets performed to praise my beauty.  But no one has ever told me they loved me. No one has ever been my friend.”

He stood before her - perfect and broken.  His longish, pine-painted fingernails touched her cheek, “I am a disaster, my precious witch.  All I can do is give you pleasure and confusion, and pain - the bad kind of pain, and I fear … I fear that if this new spell doesn’t work, it will only grow worse.  And I am terrified of, of THAT thing happening to me again.”

Nora was confused, “Thing?”

“That thing, that thing that caused this … abomination!”  He stepped back, gesturing to his body from horn tip to feet.

“You mean the orgasm?”  

“Yes.  How can you all bear it?  It was .... I have never felt so exposed, so outside of myself, so transfixed. So terrified.  Even when I was first transformed into a demon.”

“Um, I think you mean it was  _ wonderful _ ,” Nora crossed her arms.  That something that had been so amazing, so magnificent to her - if overwhelming - had been terrible for him at the same time was gutting.  “I thought it was wonderful, anyway,” she muttered.

“It was like being back in heaven, but not alone.  The remnants of my angelic self, no doubt thinking that we had been reprieved from Lucifer’s curse, has been trying to reassert himself, with results that have left me flaccid and very unkind to you.”

Nora started to say something, that it hadn’t been that bad, that she was ok, and then she stopped.  It had been that bad, and it wasn’t ok. Instead, she crossed her arms, “Is that an apology or just an explanation?”

Loki shook his head, “I-”  he started to pace, “I’m a demon.  My life, my entire existence is a punishment to myself and others.  I fuck adulterers and criminals and sinners, creatures who deserve to be fed upon, or who long to be.  You are not one of them. You are not a punishment.”

“Wow,” she swayed backwards, feeling struck, “well that is damning with faint praise.”

“No,” he took few steps to her, gripping her arms.  “You are not a punishment, nor do you deserve to be punished.  You are heaven for me, Nora. And I have not been worthy of heaven for eons.  I am certainly not worthy of you, and I am sorry for all the unhappiness I have caused you in my confusion.” 

Loki leaned forward, his horns lightly resting against her forehead, his wings caping over him.

“Oh.  Um, so you are saying-”  Nora’s heart beat so hard it ached.

“That you should leave me here.”

Nora looked to the skylight, sighed, took her left hand out of the pocket of her coat, and punched him in the mouth.

Under normal circumstances punching a demon would earn a mortal, at best, a fistful of broken bones.  Fortunately she was holding a fistful of chips of peridot, ground galangal, iron shavings, and the feather from his wing, wrapped in the silk from one of her pairs of panties he had shredded with his horns, and tied up with a piece of red cord. 

Even with the specially crafted sap he just staggered back three feet, then tripped over the cat, and landed on his splendid ass in a pile of old shopping bags and soggy, revolting garbage.  The King of the Incubi was not going to be taken out by a little hedge magic, but it still felt pretty good. 

She stalked over to stand above him as he sat up, the annoyed cat flicking its tail at both of the them.  

Rubbing his jaw, he looked through his perfect, fallen hair at her, a dirty sneer lifting the corner of his thin mouth.  “Now, now, pet, use your words.”

Gently prodding the obscene outline of his cock where it was throbbing beneath his leather pants with the toe of her hiking boot, she raised an eyebrow.  “Are you sure about that? ‘Cause it looks like-”

Nora shook her hand, trying to get some feeling back.  Pain surged up her fingers, and she bent over, holding her wrist.  Shit. She had probably broken a finger.

Faster than her eyes could follow he was up, holding her hand, frowning.  “You are bleeding.” 

With a gentle touch he unpeeled her fingers from around the sap, then stopped when she cried out, his ivory face going paler, his eyes the purest green in all of the world.  

The peridot had ripped through the silk and some of it was embedded in her palm, and she winced as he straightened what had to be at least two broken knuckles.  Nora made a mental note to never punch a major demon in the face again unless she was wearing a gauntlet.

“It’s filthy in here,” his eyes were large and serious.  “You could get any kind of infection. And the break, the break could be - . Come,” before she could stop him, he had her by her unwounded hand and was pulling softly, “we need to take care of this.  I assume you have thyme and calendula? And yarrow. Maybe your cousin has some healing, although that goddess she associates with is more on the other side of the wound department,” he fretted at her, walking so quickly she had to jog a little to keep up.  

Nora really hated being fussed over, and being fussed over by Loki seemed especially strange.

He was still talking, “That wizard might… No, there is no way I’m letting him use any of his powers on you.”

For a second she almost stopped, wondering how he thought it was for him to ‘let’ anyone do anything to her.  But then, well, she thought, I guess if it gets him back to my house I can put up with it for a while...

He stopped and turned back to the cat, “What are you waiting for?  An invitation?”

It trotted calmly behind them, its tail high and hooked like a question mark.

 

The drive back to Nora’s house was even tenser than the drive there had been.  

Maura had to drive since Loki insisted that Nora’s hand was too damaged to hold the wheel, and the car was bespelled so it wouldn’t start for anyone that wasn’t a blood relative of Claire’s.  Thomas was jammed forward so far his knees were practically on his chest, since Loki’s wingspan meant he took up most of the backseat and more. Loki had Nora on his lap - with a cat that had come from somewhere on her lap - so he could unnecessarily hold her hand above her heart, even though the bleeding had already stopped.

Maura looked at her cousin in the rear view mirror.  Her eyes were rolled to the heavens in disgust, the cat was washing its face, and Loki’s jaw had a bruise.  

She refused to look at Thomas, a little afraid of what she might see there.

When they finally arrived back in Bridgeport, it took a lot more jostling to Thomas’s body and pride to get Nora, the cat, and Loki out of the backseat.  Maura started to follow, when he reached out and grabbed her wrist. He was completely expressionless, shaking his head at her. 

Loki picked up Nora, who made a startled sound and started complain.  

“Wait,” Thomas said softly.  After the door shut behind the demon, her cousin, and the cat, Thomas reached under the seat and pushed it back into place, slid his hand into hers, lifting it to his lips.

“Wha-”

“Sometimes it takes watching another male make a horse’s ass out of himself to realize that you have been acting like a set of equine hindquarters yourself.  You have unsettled me as nothing has done in a long time. And I find I love it. I love you, Maura. Can you forgive me?”

Maura was shaking.

“For loving me?” she squeaked.

Thomas laughed, “No.  That I would like to hold you against me for as long as we both shall live.”

Her heart started beating much too fast and her words fell out of her mouth in a river of nonsense, “Um, then, well, you should hold it against me too.  Not that you love me, I mean that isn’t something you can hold against me, but that’s what you were just saying. I mean that you should hold it against me th-”

He placed a long finger to his lips, his eyes dark, “Shhh… Little girl.  I know,” he put his hand to the jaunty little muffler she wore with her winter jacket, wrapped it more firmly around her throat, and used it to pull her very nearly, but very happily, breathless, to him.

 

Loki had watched so many mortals die.  

Not just the ones he had killed.

They were so frail.  So delicate. The tiniest little thing could kill them.  Heat. Cold. Hunger. Thirst. Erotic asphyxiation. Exhaustion.  Having their life force stolen by an edacious demon. Blood loss. Germs.  Vigorous flagellation. Stress. Age - which had always seemed like a design error.  Falling, or landing, actually. Shock. Even some of their most common foods were deadly to some of them.

Once or twice Loki had watched a human that he had … he had … it was hard for him to put in to words.  That he had neither disliked nor been actively fucking at the time, die, and it had bothered him. The first two had been a pair of cousins in the Indus Valley who had been stung by insects, the last had been a gorgeous nobleman in the Edwardian era who had fallen to a stab happy sibling with poor impulse control and a blade near to hand.  

In both cases he had felt something.   

Probably disappointment that he would not be fucking them in the future.  

Seeing Nora’s blood.  Her actual blood and not just a mark or a bruise snarled inside of him like a ball of razor wire rolling across the plains, picking up bits of detritus and meat.  It hurt almost as much as his first and possibly only orgasm, but without the equal amount of pleasure that had come with that.

Weirdly, it hurt far less than Nora saying she loved him.  

Anyway, he was not going to watch her die.  

He carried her to her work room, even as she struggled and tried to get down.  As if that were possible. As if it would be  _ allowed _ , even.  

“Loki,” she was trying to get him to focus on her, but something about the sight of her blood, and the torn flesh on her hand, and the broken, swollen knuckles, “it’s fine.  I can heal it, it’s just-”

He plopped her down on her altar and started ransacking her jars and sacks and the large chest of drawers to pull out what he needed.  “Never mind,” he said, turning back to her, holding an athame and manifesting a long, silk scarf from his rather large collection of them.  

Her eyes were adorably big, and she started to scoot back away from him, knocking various ritual objects hither and yon, “Um, what are you doing with that?”

“This,” he slashed his arm open and then took her hand, carefully, so carefully, and still making her wince.  The snarl of pain started to burn within him, like acid rather than lovely hellfire. “Shhh...” he crooned to her, cradling her hand so he could spill his blood into it, “shhh, it will be good as new.”  

It started to knit almost immediately.  In moments it was whole and clear, the deep purple blood dripping off of her fingers.

“Oh,” her voice was full of wonder as she held the hand up to the light.

“Angels’ blood, more or less,” he answered the question she had not asked.

“What’s the scarf for?” 

“This,” he said, tenderly wrapping it about her wrists, then abruptly lifting her by the hips and hooking it over the coat hanger on the back of the door so her toes just barely touched the ground.  “I’ve decided to do your little ritual,” he added, kissing her, taking her mouth, fucking it with leisurely, deep strokes, the heat of it pouring into him. He put the heel of his hand between her legs and began to rub firmly, in hard, slow circles.  

“I don’t remember agreeing to this,” she said, wiggling her hands, her voice husky.  “The bondage I mean.” Some of the blood from her fingers fell onto her face and into her mouth, and she gasped and trembled.  Her back arched away from the wood and her nipples were sharp as diamonds against his chest.

Incubus blood.  More or less. Probably the most powerful aphrodisiac in the universe, but he had never bothered with it.  Now he was glad. He loved the lost, mindless delirium in her beautiful, warm eyes. 

He loved - 

He loved.  

“Oh, treasure,” he kissed her neck, then licked, “I am just too scared for anything else…” he lied.  The truth was this was the last time he was going to be with her, and he wanted to make a feast of her in his own good time.  It was not safe for her for him to stay, and he could not leave without being restored so this had to be. Knowing how close he was to the knife’s edge of another orgasm after even this little bit of playfulness, this was the only way he could be sure to last long enough to give her all that he wanted.

If she could not touch him.

If she could not kneel.

If she could only be served.

Then his claws grew and he cut her free of her clothing and went to work.

From the corner of his eye he could see the cat had followed them into the house and was laying on the altar, washing its paws.

Nora gulped as he met her eyes, leaning on the door so they were so close, and he reached behind him to pluck a feather free.

 

Limp and spent and still hanging on the edge of an orgasm  _ and _ on the door, Nora looked down at Loki’s rapt and perfect face as he rose from his knees, his wings spread fully behind him and barely fitting in her work room.  Her voice was worn and raspy from screams and begging and more. Now, finally naked, finally everything, he wrapped an arm about her hips, laying her legs over his and slowly, inch by terrible inch, slid into her swollen, ready cunt.  

Half expecting to come the moment he finished entering her, she writhed when he did not move, merely standing there, fully couched in her, his forehead pressed to hers.  His eyes were softly closed, like he was resting at his ease, but even though he was a creature of fire, his body was slick with sweat. His neck was taut, his mouth a thin line of need.  

He had worshipped her for hours, and now, finally, he would feed, she thought.    

“Oh, Nora…” he whispered.  “Goodbye, my love.”

Her heart leapt and then dropped, “Wait, wh-”

Before she could finish the words, or form a thought, he pulled out and thrust in again, and all thought was obliterated, as he thrust, hard and assured, scooping up with his hips to grind on her and then back out, all of the while chanting in Latin.

Doing the spell.  

He was doing the spell, she thought, her mind pulling itself out of the desperate place that just needed to come and come and come.  

He shouldn’t be the one doing the spell.  They had changed that part. 

He-

He did something with his hand, and something with his cock, and Nora forgot her own internal language as she felt herself start to move towards her climax and she mindlessly rocked in countertime to him and bit his ear.

 

“Ahhhh…………….” he gasped out, trying to find words in the garbled noises that were all they were both making.  He was close. He was afraid. He wanted it. He wanted her. He wanted her. He wanted her. He wanted them.

 

The orgasm took both of them in the same instant, her legs convulsing about him, his hips jerking up helplessly, his wings creating a storm in the bungalow of such pressure that it broke every window on the second floor.

The cat, disgruntled, stalked past their locked bodies, flicking its tail and left the room.

Nora moaned, two names, and Loki’s body jerked into a second peak, taking out the first floor windows that time.

 

Two Weeks Later…

The last window had been replaced that Friday morning, and Nora had been able to move back into her house.  

She had been staying at a friend’s place with her new pet since the morning of the Sunday after Thanksgiving when she had again woken up alone, that second time in a very, very drafty house.  

They were good windows, double glazed, with nice new screens and all, she thought, shivering and looking at them as walked up to the door.  They wouldn’t rattle in that familiar and charming way the old wooden ones had, but they would save her a bundle on heat costs. She had let them be paid for by her soon-to-be cousin in-law Thomas as an apology for his behavior on Thanksgiving and a thank you for bringing Maura into his life even if inadvertently.

Letting herself inside after struggling to get her keys out while still wearing her gloves, the weather being bitter for early December, Nora let the cat jump out of her arms and dropped her suitcases, backpack, and purse in the foyer.  

The glass and other debris had been cleaned up, but the house was still a mess.  She’d barely been back since … since  _ that _ night, other than to walk around with the window guy and make sure that the one snow storm they’d had, with wet, heart attack-inducing snow punishing the city for a whole day and night, hadn’t gotten into her broken little home.

Today all she had the energy for was to change her bedding, grocery shop, and maybe take a bath.  The work could start tomorrow.

The bungalow felt empty.  

The cat wrapped around her ankles, chirping.  

Almost empty.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll bring your litter box and toys in next.   _ And _ the food,” she said, stooping to give her a good pet, getting pleased trill in return.   She would need to think of a name for the cat soon. But there was a part of her that was hoping against hope that  _ someone _ would come back and give the little beast a name instead, since she was really  _ his  _ cat, after all.

Alas, Loki was long gone to parts and fucks unknown, having again been gone when she had woken, laid out on her couch, fully clothed, and with the cat curled up on the pillow next to her head.

Turning to go back to the car for the cat’s belongings, Nora sighed.  It had been a long, shitty few weeks, and all she had the energy for tonight was getting them both settled, changing the bedding on her still busted bed, taking a bath, ordering pizza, and drinking a bottle of wine, or two, so she would be able to sleep.  

With the memories she had of the last shenanigans that had gone on here it would hard to imagine falling asleep any other way.  Then tomorrow, she could start straightening out her life. Hopefully she could find another job. 

Maybe she could even call Freddie.  Although as she’d never returned any of his calls after their one, sweet karaoke date she wouldn’t blame him if he ducked her in right back.

But first, rest.

On her porch, the overhead light gleaming on his horns, was the Incubus King himself.  

Nora closed her eyes, praying to various goddesses for strength.  She could not deal with him one more time. Then she opened one eye, flinching a little.  

Then she closed it and opened the other. 

Then she opened them both, her mouth slightly open.

Where his horns had been ivory they were now black, gleaming and longer, the tips glowing faintly with hellfire.  His eyes were no longer all green, but the irises were the color of embers - with flickers of blue and white now and then.  His incisors were now pearly, perfect little fangs, and even shirtless and barefoot, clad only in suede leggings and his fur coat, steam smoked off his body.  

His hair was a post-coital halo of purest darkness, begging to have fingers buried in it, to be stroked, to be pulled. 

Where the ends curled, they smoldered.

The heavy, frozen snow had melted where he had walked up to her house.

Just like her panties.

“Hello, my delicious witch,” he purred at her, his voice rough and dark, lounging against her doorway.  “We have to talk,” he said, reaching to walk his fingertips from between her breasts to stroke her lower lip.

Nora shuddered and her eyes fluttered closed.

Then there was a soft, then harder, gust of wind, and the ice covered tree limbs chimed like they had been strummed.

Nora’s eyes opened and this time she flat-out stared.

The angel’s arms were crossed and his face was expressionless, as he lowered himself from the heavens into her yard.

Floating, so his brilliantly shined Oxfords didn’t o much as brush the ground, his wings were the most perfect, purest white, and spread wide so they reflected glory onto her beat up home.  His suit was blue and perfectly tailored to his long body, and his hair was in an elegant braid down his back, where it swished a bit, as if irritated.

His eyes glowed softly, the faintest shade of green, of celadon.  

“Yes, my enchantress, for once he is correct,“ Loki said, his voice musical and deep, frowning at the demon and then smiling, just the tiniest bit shyly, at Nora, “We really must talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You are cordially invited to spend the holidays with the witch, the Incubus, the angel, the Irish witch, and the wizard, as this story concludes in part three, A Carol of Last Chances.


End file.
